South Korea’s Moon says cannot recognize North Korea as nuclear state

SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg via Getty Images

Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s president, speaks at the National Assembly in Seoul, South Korea, on Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2017.

South Korea will never tolerate North Korea as a nuclear state, nor will Seoul have nuclear weapons, President Moon Jae-in said on Wednesday, as China pledged to work on denuclearisation after setting aside a dispute with Seoul over an anti-missile system.

The North Korea nuclear crisis will take center stage when U.S. President Donald Trump begins a trip to Asia at the end of the week along with diplomacy has being ramping up ahead of of which visit.

A series of weapons tests by Pyongyang along having a string of increasingly bellicose exchanges between Trump along with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in recent months has raised fears about an armed conflict.

Speaking to parliament, Moon said there can be no military action on the Korean peninsula without the South’s consent, adding the government will continue working for peace on the peninsula.

“According to the joint denuclearization declaration made by North along with South Korea, we cannot tolerate or recognize North Korea as a nuclear state. We too, will not develop nuclear (weapons) or own them,” he said.

“Our government was launched inside the most serious of times in terms of security. The government is actually creating efforts to stably manage the situation the idea faces as well as to bring about peace on the Korean peninsula.”

China’s foreign ministry said Beijing along with Seoul will continue to use diplomatic means to address the Korean peninsula issue, after a meeting in Beijing between Lee Do-hoon, South Korea’s representatives of stalled six-party nuclear talks, along with his Chinese counterpart, Kong Xuanyou.

Moon’s remarks along with China’s statement came a day after China along with South Korea agreed to normalise relations to end a year-long standoff over the deployment of the U.S. Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system.

The installation of THAAD had angered China, which feared its powerful radar could see deep into China. South Korea’s tourism, cosmetics along with entertainment industries bore the brunt of a Chinese backlash, although Beijing has never specifically linked of which to the THAAD deployment.